From cardboard penguins on the Science Center lawn to John Harvard’s many costumes of late, unpredictable and often seemingly whimsical public displays of art are a source of intrigue and confusion for many students. But while these public arts at Harvard often take on a lighthearted façade, they also have depth of communication. Several student groups actively promote public art in events called “happenings.”

One such event occurred two weeks ago when, in honor of Halloween, the Harvard Social Forum Arts Collective hosted a “Carnival and Art Making Extravaganza.” Based on a colonial public art legend involving an axe murderer, a human sculpture and twelve artistic, yet doomed Revolutionaries, the event featured mask making, storytelling, and a “pumpkin parade” in Harvard Yard.

“Happenings are unscripted,” said Neasa Coll ’05, a founding member of Present!, a prominent student arts group. “They’re more interactive. That way, there’s an element of creation and involvement in the process.” Perhaps the nebulous quality of a happening event is its most defining characteristic; “They can be formal or informal, planned or spontaneous,” said Coll.

David D. Mahfouda ’05, a Visual and Environmental Studies Concentrator in Dudley House, and Coll, a Social Anthropology concentrator in Leverett House, are the chief planners of Present!’s next happening. The event’s focus will be the construction of a gigantic cloth box.

“We need to think about texture and weight,” said Coll, surrounded by brightly colored cloth in a Sew-Low fabric supply shop. “There’s a bright yellow...No, that would look like a fluorescent McDonald’s....” Coll and Mahfouda peruse the rolls of cloth until they find a suitably shocking turquoise to match the cheerful red fabric they have already carefully selected.

“We want to build a ten-foot by ten-foot cube out of fabric,” Mahfouda said. “The plan is to have everyone parade the cube through some space in the Yard, then get inside the cube and have lunch. We don’t know how many people will show up…We don’t even know if we’ll remember to bring food,” said a grinning Mahfouda. “It’s completely spur-of-the-moment.”

HOW HAPPENINGS CAME TO BE

Spontaneous though the happenings of today may be, the events are actually part of a formal tradition of public art that extends back to an October evening in 1959, when Allan Kaprow debuted his 18 Happenings in 6 Parts at New York’s Reuben Gallery. According to RoseLee Goldberg in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, Kaprow built three small rooms in a loft, filled them with chairs, and herded the audience from room to room showing them disjointed actions like a woman standing still “for ten seconds, left forearm raised, pointing to the floor” or two “performers reciting monosyllabic words.” Kaprow thought that the audience’s presence, interactions, or observations completed his pieces. From then on, a “happening” has referred to a work of performing art that requires others’ participation.

Cambridge itself has a history of happening-like events as old as 237 years ago, according to Catherine A. Siller ’06. In an e-mail promoting the Arts Collective Halloween event, she cited Brown’s 1893 “History of Cambridge,” saying, “On Halloween 1767, Cambridge witnessed the ghastly Vespers Massacre at what is now Winthrop Park (on JFK St.) in which an ‘impromptue human sculpeture, each component dressed in elaborate costumery’ was killed by a mad, axe-wielding man.” The artwork was the product of “a number of Cambridge’s artistic and literary rebels who had come to … place ‘newe formef of arte in the publick optick!’”

This history of art as political and social expression is particularly relevant to the role of the Arts Collective in happenings. Its attachment to the Harvard Social Forum provides an outlet for members of the Harvard community to communicate their thoughts on significant issues creatively. In seeking to provide such a channel, the Arts Collective identifies with its social-justice roots.

Present!, an organization of intrepid upperclassmen now in its sophomore year, focuses more intensely on happenings. The group describes itself as “devoted to sharing, exploring and enjoying the visible and hidden, the now and the future and the impossible, the spontaneous and the momentary, from many sides....” Present! also publishes a creative literary magazine and takes part in other events that are more formal and structured.

Present! found its birth at the Manifesto Party last October in Adams House’s Kronauer Space, when the founding members gathered together to write and make proclamations of their personal and artistic ideas. “It was really exciting to hear my friends’ formal writing in an informal setting,” said Coll, one of the group’s major organizers.

More recently, Present! hosted a “Letter-Writing Campaign” outside the Science Center over Freshman Parents’ Weekend. The organization supplied typewriters, paper, and stamps; students supplied their own thoughts and messages. The group sealed, addressed, and mailed each piece of correspondence; students needed only bring something to say. The response was overwhelmingly positive from passersby, who readily unveiled unknown passions for letter-writing as well as the characteristic college student’s love of mail.

While happenings may seem whimsical in their spontaneity, the students who organize the productions consider their art substantial. Organizers in Present! often invest considerable amounts of their own time, money, and energy into producing a display like Mahfouda’s cube. They are invested in the whole process of a happening, facilitating its evolution from one person’s idea to a campus-wide event.

HAPPENINGS WITHIN AN INSTITUTION